In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water.... They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off.

Karl Marx (1818–1883), German political theorist, social philosopher. repr. In Selected Works, vol. 2 (1942). Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on "The Civil War in France," (1871).